ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND WAITING

“Patience is a virtue,” claimed English poet William Langland in 1360. That’s a long time ago. But today, some 662 years later, we are asked to be constantly patient. Waiting on line at the drugstore, waiting online while that stupid beachball from hell keeps spinning on your computer screen, waiting for a fellow texter to respond, waiting for a table at a popular restaurant (“as soon as that table pays the check, the table is yours”) and most annoyingly, waiting in the doctor’s office which is where we take you in our first comic (second in your scroll). I don’t know how many times I have sat in a waiting room stewing, thinking, “I’m gonna charge them MY hourly fee and deduct it from the final bill!!!!” Yeah right. But this time Al figures, “Screw it, how about I make the doctor wait?” It works in a comic strip, good luck trying it in real life.

Our second strip deals with political correctness. Now surely, if an entire race or culture finds a term insulting, we should do our best to avoid using it in the future. But the rules keep constantly changing. For instance, we no longer should refer to a “master bedroom,” because “master” is a term that dates back to slavery. We should now refer to it as the “primary bedroom.” Just yesterday, I found myself in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and stopped at a Chinese restaurant named Koi. First of all, every other place named Koi, is a Japanese restaurant. But what struck me most is what was written underneath Koi on the restaurant’s sign in the parking lot. It said, “Koi, Oriental food.” Now I know you can’t say “Oriental” anymore unless you’re talking about a rug, but here was a Chinese restaurant with a Japanese name using the offending term (I wasn’t offended, I was too busy enjoying the chicken with black bean sauce). Similarly, John was listening to classic rock and wondering, what if he was walking along, listening to some playlist on his headphones, singing out loud, and Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” came up. Would you sing the politically correct version instead? Incidentally, “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” along with “Lola” were way ahead of their time, dealing with cross-dressing and transsexuality (Fran Lebowitz once said, “Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is merely a good excuse not to play football.”) But I digress. The point is that these two avant-garde songs still had phrases that today seem completely out of touch. So what’s a confused 60-something to do? Don’t ask us, we don’t have a freakin’ clue.

Have a terrific weekend and we’ll be back next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

You can say anything, but don't say THAT!!!!!!

If you’re of a certain age, it’s tough to know what to say these days. Especially on the subjects of politics and gender identity. It seems that no matter what you say or what you believe, you wind up offending someone. Or many someones.

The first comic you’ll see this week deals with gender identity. It is not about making fun of a very serious topic. It is making fun of OUR confusion about a very serious topic. Before we proceeded we asked for some millennial opinions. Here’s a sample: “could be perceived as ignorant, if not offensive,” “the burden is not on the older generation in trying to understand it, the burden is on the people who are living it.” All true and valid points. But THIS particular comic, The New 60, is about what our characters are feeling and how they are trying to make sense of a world in which everything is changing with increasing rapidity. Now, we understand nothing about the struggles of gender identity is funny. But confusion, specifically the confusion of our characters as they try to come to grips with a new reality, now THAT’S funny. SO we went ahead and did it. Don’t shoot us. We want to be alive for next week’s comics as well.

The second one you’ll come across came from an incident in John’s life. John lives far away from NY City but his job and this job require him to come in from time to time. And so, one day, he found himself drifting off behind the wheel. You know all the techniques: pull off the road at the next rest stop and take a nap, open your windows to let the cold air in, turn the radio up, etc. But John had a creative solution that actually worked. What John did is turn the radio to a news talk show with a host whose views he despised. That got him going. It worked. If you have any doubts, just think of when you are watching a news show and the other side has a brave representative who comes on and expresses the opposite opinion of what you believe. If you’re anything like Andy, you shout, curse and yell at the person to shut the f@#* up.

That’s the thing with this strip. Knowing where to look for material is surprisingly easy. We just live it. Ideas happen in cars, in stores, in restaurants, in movies and in stories our friends tell us. It’s why, on the website, “Andy gives this dire warning: If you are with me, near me or within earshot of me, you are fodder for this strip.” Beware. See you next week with two new ones and have a great, but freezing cold, weekend.

Andy and John

What's a person to do? 4/5/19

Political correctness. The title of this blog reflects it. We could have said what’s a guy to do, or what’s a gal (see there is no damn equivalent for guy) to do but to be pc, we settled on what’s a person to do. Politically correct but borrrrring.

So let’s see if we have the rules straight. It’s okay to say “people of color” but don’t dare say “colored people.” Or take the word “queer” which is suddenly acceptable. Last week someone actually said Mayor Pete, the former mayor of South Bend Indiana and the first openly gay man to run for President was “not gay enough.” Whatever that means. At any rate, The New 60 takes a crack at this interesting, ever-changing and sometimes maddening topic.

The second comic comes from a certain brother-in-law who was out to dinner with a friend and called one of us to say he and his dinner companion were cracking each other up with all the underwear choices there are out there. Our response…now THAT’S a comic strip. Suddenly it’s okay to talk about your balls. Duluth Trading Company has an announcer with a really deep voice saying stuff like, “It keeps your boys in place.” Or Lululemon has a line of pants that stretch called ABC Pants, and when you look at the label, it actually says the ABC stands for Anti-Ball-Crushing pants. So we tackle this subject head on. Wait a minute, that didn’t sound right. At any rate, you get the drift. Now go ahead and get the comics. We’ll see you next week with two more new ones.

The New 60